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[Please go to \'Settings\' to change your Tagline]Thu, 08 Sep 2011 21:26:36 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=3.9.2Finding Sanctuary on Nine-Elevenhttp://www.forbes.com/sites/stanhieronymus/2011/09/08/finding-sanctuary-on-nine-eleven/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stanhieronymus/2011/09/08/finding-sanctuary-on-nine-eleven/#commentsThu, 08 Sep 2011 21:26:36 +0000http://blogs.forbes.com/stanhieronymus/?p=20This column was written for All About Beer magazine in September of 2001.

In the hours immediately after terrorists flew airplanes into the Pentagon and New York City’s Twin Towers on Sept. 11, Rich O’s Public House publican Roger Baylor paced anxiously between his pub and Pizza Time, the restaurant/bar next door that he also owns. Pizza Time has television sets; his pub does not.

“I was freaking out, basically,” he said. He began to think of the many people with whom he wanted to talk, who he should call. “Then I realized that I didn’t have to. I thought, ‘They’ll all be in here.’” Sure enough, as shifts ended regulars began to drift in. “There are a group of us, well I’m always here, we all sort of appear at the same time,” Baylor said.

The regulars discovered that Baylor had put a television on the counter up front – the first time a TV had been in the bar in three years. Those who wanted the latest news could get it, then find seats out of television range. “People would retreat back into the bar to talk, to get away from these images for a while,” Baylor said. “The first few days there was only one thing (the terrorist attacks) that they talked about.”

Television news stories in the following days sometimes showed bulging barrooms across the United States and other times empty ones in tourist destinations. They reported patrons flocked to bars because they did not want to be alone while they watched the horrible images on the television screen, but did not differentiate between those watching alone in a crowd and those who sought familiar faces.

“People wanted to go to a place where they felt like they were with family,” said Daryl Woodson, who has been running the appropriately named The Sanctuary in Iowa City, Iowa, for 27 years. “They didn’t say that, but people who come in normally at 10 were in at 8.”

The Sanctuary has two fireplaces (one working) but not usually a television. Woodson brought one in on Sept. 11, and took it out the next day. “People wanted to watch what was happening while the story was still unfolding,” he said. “One of our regulars asked where I got a TV with such lousy reception. I told him it’s called a cheap antenna.”

Rich O’s and The Sanctuary offer a broader selection of beer than most bars – the best-selling beer at Rich O’s is Three Floyd’s Alpha King and if an interesting specialty beer is available in Iowa then The Sanctuary was probably the first place in the state to offer it – but they may be more noteworthy because they are throwbacks.

The population of the United States has more than doubled since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, but the number of licensed drinking establishments has shrunk by as much as two-thirds. In Chicago, for instance, there were more than 10,000 tavern licenses at the end of World War II, and now there are fewer than 2,500.

In The Great Good Place, author Ray Oldenburg notes that what he calls “third place” taverns have been particularly hard hit. Oldenburg writes that not only have such taverns disappeared or changed – so have post offices, drug stores, grain elevators and similar “third places” (after home, first, and workplace, second) that provide informal gathering spots essential to the survival of any community.

The role of the tavern in American community life goes back almost until the time this country was settled. Parts of the American revolution were plotted in taverns, 100 years later unions were born in taverns, celebrations for soldiers heading to (and returning from) two world wars were held in taverns.

There are occasional reminders. Visit Cadieux Cafe, which has served Detroit’s Belgian enclave since Prohibition, and you’ll find a large display on the wall listing “Our boys at camp and overseas,” with the names of neighborhood boys who became soldiers.

Most such places are gone, torn down in old city neighborhoods, never built in carefully planned suburbs. Many watching the scenes from the rest of the country would probably be surprised to have found bars full of customers in much of New York City outside of lower Manhattan, but it is still a prototypical city, still has neighborhoods and still has bars that cater to those neighborhoods.

There are enough around that drinkers may choose a nearby place because the owner is Irish, because the happy hour prices are great or even because the beer is more interesting than next door. Across the country, beer with flavor has been an essential component in helping some bars build community, instantly giving would-be regulars something in common.

Beer is why many of the regulars started going to O’Brien’s Microbrew Pub in San Diego, but not why they were there the week of Sept. 11. “Lunch times were ridiculous the first couple of days, nuts, just nuts,” said owner Jim O’Brien. Customers who usually visit only after work for the wide beer selection were also there for lunch, drawn by the food and televisions but also because they knew they’d find a friend on a nearby bar stool.

“We pretty much see the same faces on a day-to-day basis,” O’Brien said. “There was only one subject (of conversation). This place is never quiet and these guys aren’t afraid to be totally honest about what they feel.”

Things were quiet at the Country Inn in Krumville, N.Y., located near the Ashokan Reservoir that serves New York City, and that was closed for safety reasons. “The original reaction was numbness, it’s still numbness,” said Larry Erenburg, the owner and guy behind the bar for more than 25 years.

The Country Inn doesn’t have a television, so a bar full of customers – beer sales were up for the week, although the place was almost empty on Thursday when the president addressed the nation on TV – sat quietly around a radio on Sept. 11 before conversation returned to a normal level later in the week.

“This place is a sounding board for people,” Erenburg said. But there are house rules against certain topics: politics, softball and chain saws. “There were flags waving, quite a show of patriotism in its own way, but it was just conversation rather than politics,” Erenburg said.

Politics is a more constant subject of conversation at Rich O’s, where The Economist and International Herald Tribune are always available for reading. “There’s a certain amount of discussion about the state of the world,” Baylor said, but also plenty about beer. “We always talk about beer,” he said, finishing with a laugh.

The discussion might center on what international company just acquired another smaller brewery or what to do with the firkin of Bell’s (Kalamazoo, Mich.) Two-Hearted Ale that accidentally got delivered to Rich O’s. (The decision was to drink it.)

Woodson figures that about one third of The Sanctuary’s customers come in for the live music (jazz, roots), one third for the food (great pizza) and one third for the beer and conversation. Few ask why there isn’t a television. “Having a TV is a good way to kill conversation,” he said.

His business was up in the weeks after the attacks. “I think people wanted to get away from it, seeing it all the time on TV,” he said. “Especially people who live alone.”

Woodson, who in 27 years has seen more economic ups and downs than most of today’s brewpub and brewery owners, also doesn’t think that the economic downturn the attacks seem sure to make worse need seriously hurt a neighborhood tavern’s business.

“You are still going to go out for an reasonably priced meal, a decent evening, a few beers,” he said. “It is a luxury you can afford.”

Pam Brittingham, a bartender at The Globe in Athens, Ga., saw a similar attitude in the weeks after Sept. 11. The Globe opens at 4 o’clock, so she and other employees listened to National Public Radio (the Globe has no television, and didn’t even offer one during the 1996 Olympics).

They kept the radio on in the first hours after the pub opened, but then chose to change to music at a low volume. “We wanted to give them some relief from what they had been listening to all day,” she said three weeks after the attacks. “By the weekend, people were needing to get out and do something normal, they didn’t even want to talk about it. It’s still probably what people talk about the most, but every three or four days somebody will say, ‘I can’t talk about this any more.’”

As important as neighborhood taverns were to so many people Sept.11, like too many other third places they will probably continue to disappear at an alarming rate. But they really were “great good places” to be, and also to work, that day.

“There were definitely people coming in looking for each other,” Brittingham said. “It’s still going on. Everybody is extremely friendly and appreciative of each other.” And perhaps of having a good public place to gather.

]]>http://www.forbes.com/sites/stanhieronymus/2011/09/08/finding-sanctuary-on-nine-eleven/feed/0When a flagship beer meets an IPA . . .http://www.forbes.com/sites/stanhieronymus/2011/08/21/when-a-flagship-beer-meets-and-ipa/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stanhieronymus/2011/08/21/when-a-flagship-beer-meets-and-ipa/#commentsSun, 21 Aug 2011 16:45:14 +0000http://blogs.forbes.com/stanhieronymus/?p=16Some people will actually tell you they hate New Belgium Fat Tire Amber Ale. It’s complicated, and I really just want to pass along a few numbers, so I’ll simply says it seems silly to me, but it’s their energy.

Fact is that as New Belgium drives deeper into the East Coast this year it will be Fat Tire that drinkers ask for first.

Some interesting figures emerged in the run up to the brewery’s twentieth anniversary last month. Although overall production increased 13% last year, to 661,000 31-gallon barrels, Fat Tire sales grew only 2%.

According to Impact Databank, Fat Tire accounted for 70% of New Belgium sales in 2008, 67% in 2009 and 60% in 2010. The biggest change last year was the introduction of Ranger IPA. New Belgium sold more than 50,000 barrels in 2010, 8% of production, more Ranger IPA than its well known neighbor, Odell Brewing, made in total.

]]>http://www.forbes.com/sites/stanhieronymus/2011/08/21/when-a-flagship-beer-meets-and-ipa/feed/0Book Review: The Naked Pinthttp://www.forbes.com/sites/stanhieronymus/2010/11/17/book-review-the-naked-pint/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stanhieronymus/2010/11/17/book-review-the-naked-pint/#commentsWed, 17 Nov 2010 20:46:39 +0000http://blogs.forbes.com/stanhieronymus/?p=12Alan McLeod totally nailed it with his review of The Naked Pint: An Unadulterated Guide to Craft Beer, answering the two biggest questions I had while reading the book.

- First, why are there homebrew recipes in this book? Can’t even a book for beginners be a bit specialized or must every introduction to craft beer tell us a little bit about everything? Look, I’m not exactly complaining because (disclaimer alert) they recommend Brew Like a Monk and it’s a good thing when a book that is going to rank ahead of yours at Amazon.com says nice things about it.

I like the analogy that Alan draws to The Yachtsman’s Week-end Book, writing that Naked Pint “harkens to a day when a book could purport to be an omnibus filled with everything you practically need to know to get from novice to pretty well capable.”

- Second, were you to give this book as a present who would you give it to? Again, quoting Alan, “This is a book for beer nerds to give their friends. It will tell the nerds a lot about good beer but it will also tell them a lot about their beer nerd pal.”

Indeed. Any copy coming from me would come complete with Post-it notes correcting a variety of niggling errors. I can’t help myself. I’ve already whined about “candi sugar,” though because almost everybody seems to get that crooked I’m giving them a pass. However you wonder who was in charge of editing when you see the phrase “bottom-fermenting ales.” Or why on page 130 they get it right in explaining misconceptions about dubbels and tripels after getting it wrong on page 23.

So you probably aren’t going to use this book to study for the Cicerone exam. But it’s easy to like. Authors Hallie Beaune and Christina Perozzi write in a breezy and sometimes brassy manner. (“A 5% ABV beer can make you friendly; an 8% ABV beer can make you French kiss a tree.”)

They consistently explain things about beer that can seem overwhelming at the outset. Consider their approach to presenting styles. They always begin with an easy-to-read blurb. Like this:

Bitter, but Not Angry: Bitters

This beer’s for you if you like: being surly but not mean, long discussions about Shakespearean themes. Notes of toffee. Staying on your stool. Evenings at the pub.

Far more interesting than any style guidelines you’ve ever read.

Alan got it perfect, but before you give it to your friends ready for a bit of beer education read it over yourself. You might find yourself better prepared to talk with them.

]]>http://www.forbes.com/sites/stanhieronymus/2010/11/17/book-review-the-naked-pint/feed/0Is Westvleteren about to boost production?http://www.forbes.com/sites/stanhieronymus/2010/11/11/is-westvleteren-about-to-boost-production-3/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stanhieronymus/2010/11/11/is-westvleteren-about-to-boost-production-3/#commentsThu, 11 Nov 2010 20:47:32 +0000http://blogs.forbes.com/?p=6Recent reports that Abbey Saint Sixtus, the Trappist monastery at Westvleteren in Belgium, might boost production of its much-cherished beer and sell it through supermarket channels led to the consumption of considerable bandwidth on beer discussion boards.

Perhaps some of the questions not addressed by that story were answered in the various threads, but not in the few I had time to read. And I didn’t see a mention of the report from Danny Van Tricht in September that the abbey had installed new lagering tanks. Gee, doesn’t that make you wonder just how much more beer Saint Sixtus might brew?

I don’t have a definitive answer, but an email response from Brother Joris — the monk in charge of brewing at Saint Sixtus — would indicate “not much” and even that won’t be on a permanent basis.

He explained, “I am not allowed to give away more details on the matter, as it should be a surprise.”

He wrote that the reports the brewery would sell beer away from the monastery are not correct, adding, “We remain faithful to our sales policy and we have no intention of opening a second channel for the distribution of our beers in the way suggested by the media.” He indicated the monastery is considering a one-time special project (that would not last for long) to raise additional funds for construction work on the cloister.. “This will however not come down to ‘Westvleteren being for sale in the racks of a supermarket,’” he wrote.

He further explained that the new tanks make the production schedule more flexible, so that brewing needn’t be delayed because beer in the lagering tanks isn’t ready for bottling. This makes it possible to produce a fixed quantity each year (currently that might vary between 4,200 and 4,750 hectoliters a year — comparable to about 3,600 to 4,000 U.S. barrels).

Digression No. 1:Stephen Beaumont has asked what will become of Westvelteren’s cult status should they become easier to buy. The notion — not Mr. B’s, should there be any confusion — that the Saint Sixtus beers might be “dumbed down” is laughable. By adding lagering tanks the monks assure that beer will not be hurried out the door. When I visited the brewery in 2004, Brother Joris explained that the 8 usually lagers four weeks but that the 12 might take two months to ten weeks, “when you get a difficult one.”

If the monks at Saint Sixtus wanted to ramp up production they already could have. The thoroughly modern brewhouse installed in 1989 could crank out a lot more wort, and the squares for primary fermentation sit idle more days than they are used. Plenty of breweries around the world have shortened lagering or aging times to meet growing demand.

Digression No. 2: In cruising through discussion boards I saw it suggested, and I’m paraphrasing, that “the monks should brew more beer to raise more money for the poor.” How come nobody finishes that sentence with what they are really thinking? “. . . and make it easier for me to buy their beer.”

In fact, larger monastery breweries, notably Westmalles and Chimay, help support other monasteries, multiple charities and local economies. Chimay, with 150 employees in its brewery and cheese making facility, is one of the largest employers in one of Belgium’s poorest regions. Westvleteren sells its beer in wooden crates (pictured at the top) manufactured in a “shielded workplace” for those not able to work in a mainstream environment.

But that’s not why they brew. Monks — Benedictine, Cistercian and Trappist — live by the rule of Saint Benedict, written about A.D. 530. Among other things, it calls on monks to be self-sufficient through their own labor.

Brother Joris puts it quite well: “We live on brewing, but we do it so we can continue with our real business, which is being monks.”